Excerpts from Mbeki's state of the nation speech

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Following are excerpts from South African President Thabo Mbeki's state of the nation address to parliament on Friday:

ECONOMY

Further to accelerate our economic growth and development we will implement the Industrial Policy Action Plan. Government will continue our industrialization program and continue to create opportunities for growth and employment-creation. In this regard, 2.3 billion rand ($295.8 million) has been budgeted for industrial policy initiatives and a further 5 billion rand in tax incentives over three years will support industrial policy.

POWER CRISIS

The national emergency represented by the current power outages poses the challenge and presents the opportunity to the entirety of our nation to give concrete expression to the call we have just made for all of us to unite in action and act in unity to keep our country on course. This must say to all of us that we are indeed in a period of challenges, but surmountable challenges. And precisely because it is a period of challenges, it is also an era of opportunity!

We face an emergency but we can overcome the problems in a relatively short period. This situation has precipitated the inevitable realization that the era of very cheap and abundant electricity has come to an end. However, given our large base of installed generation capacity, for a long time to come ours will remain amongst the few economies with affordable electricity.

MINING

We are a minerals resource economy. We must therefore continue to support the mining industry. It is inevitable that if we are to continue on our growth path as a manufacturing country, we will also have to continue supporting the processing industry. However, it is imperative that all enterprises become more energy-efficient. Indeed energy efficiency itself provides economic opportunity.

FIFA WORLD CUP

This is exactly the same approach we much adopt as we continue to prepare to host the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2009 and the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup which will kick off in our country 854 days from today. I mention this important matter here because the current challenges we are facing have led some elsewhere in the world once more to question whether we will be able to host these tournaments successfully.

Of course, I have absolutely no doubt that we will honor our undertaking to FIFA and the world community of soccer players and lovers to create all the necessary conditions for the holding of the best ever FIFA Soccer World Cup tournament.

SERVICES

We will also integrate the program to speed up the development of sustainable human settlements, with intensified efforts, as a matter of urgent priority, to accelerate universal access to water, sanitation and electricity, so that by 2014, we should have decent human settlements and access by all households to these services.

AIDS

Accelerating our advance towards the achievement of a goal of health for all includes intensified implementation of the National Strategic Plan against HIV and AIDS. We also aim during the course of this year to reduce TB defaulter rates from 10 percent to 7 percent, train over 3,000 health personnel in the management of this disease and ensure that all multi-drug-resistant and extreme drug-resistant TB patients receive treatment.

CRIME

When we reflected on the issue of crime at last year's Joint Sitting of Parliament, we all expressed grave concern not only at the high rates of crime, but also at the indication that things seemed to be turning for the worse especially in respect of murder bucking the trend of the improvement since the attainment of democracy ...

Cabinet has agreed on a set of changes that are required to establish a new, modernized, efficient and transformed criminal justice system.

ZIMBABWE

Over the past year, we carried out the mandate of SADC (regional grouping of nations) to assist the political leadership of Zimbabwe to find a lasting solution to the challenges they face ... In short, the parties involved in the dialogue have reached full agreement on all matters relating to the substantive matters the parties had to address.